Chapter Twenty-Three
Our therapist was older than us by at least a decade.
There was a plain silver band on her ring finger.
Our first therapist had been younger than us and the longest she’d managed to live with anyone was less than a year; she’d never been married.
How did I know all that about her? Because I’d asked after a few sessions where I felt like maybe we knew more than she did about being a couple.
It had been a huge fight with Reggie. She’d almost signed the divorce papers, so she said later.
There was a part of me that would have been relieved if she’d done it.
I didn’t want our marriage to end, but I was beginning to just want it done, yes or no, in or out.
Hell might be worse than Purgatory, but at least you picked a direction and knew your fate.
Dr. Martin sat there looking pleasant, but serious, as if she was almost smiling, but you could never quite catch her at it.
It was a neat trick, like counselors had their own version of cop face, that mask you wore when you wanted a suspect or a witness to tell you everything you needed to know.
The best thing she’d accomplished for us so far was getting Reggie to stop harping on my first marriage to a stripper when I was a brand-new private in the army.
The woman had taken me for everything I had, what little there was of it, and served me papers when I was in a forward area, probably hoping I’d die in combat, so she’d get the most insurance possible.
That was the marriage that taught me I didn’t have to marry a woman just because I had sex with her once.
Did I mention I was raised in what amounted to a religious cult?
“Zaniel, are you even listening to me?” Reggie’s voice on the other end of the couch from me.
I hadn’t been listening. I didn’t even know how long I hadn’t been listening; not good.
I took a deep breath in and let it out slow as I turned to look at her.
Seeing her still hurt like hell. When we’d first started counseling, I’d stared at her as if I wanted to memorize her.
The full face, which she thought was too wide, but I thought framed her big, brown eyes perfectly.
If her face had been narrower the eyes would have been too big like a Japanese anime character.
The strong, high cheekbones that almost overwhelmed her mouth, which was why she wore lip liner and lipstick constantly to give the illusion that her upper lip was closer to the fullness of her bottom lip.
I thought she was beautiful without any makeup, but the dark, artful lipstick did help bring her lips out to balance the strength of her face and those huge, dark eyes.
The eyes were the third thing I’d noticed about her when we first met.
The first was her height. She was five foot nine and had been wearing five-inch stilettos, which made her an inch shorter than me.
I’d thought for a second, before I saw the shoes, that she was my height, and I’d loved it.
When you’re six-three you date shorter women, because it’s hard to find taller ones, but I saw those strong shoulders, the fine muscle play in her tanned arms, and I thought, Athlete , and I liked that, too.
Her back had been strong and bare with tiny little straps barely there.
The pink blossoms and curling green leaves of the tattoo on her right shoulder seemed to cover more than the back of her dress.
The tanned skin of her back had been exposed to her waist with just a hint of the swell of her hips as she moved.
When I finally got to see her from the front the dress had been solid black, hinting at small, firm breasts, which went along with the amount of slim muscle under all that smooth skin.
Most women had to trade curves for that level of fitness, and I was good with the trade.
Her hair was a brown so dark I’d thought it was black until I saw it in bright sunlight on our third date.
Her hair was thick and wavy, but she straightened it almost as often as she wore the red lipstick that stood out against her tan like a Valentine’s Day promise.
She was wearing the lipstick today, along with enough eye makeup to make her eyes huge and romantic, except for the anger in them.
She spent most counseling sessions angry.
I spent most of them confused. It was like she had the CliffsNotes on how to do couples counseling and hadn’t shared them with me.
“Sorry, could you repeat that last part?”
She crossed her arms underneath the fuller breasts that cutting back on the exercise and having a baby had given her.
The thin red sweater looked good against her almost year-round tan; she could get lighter if she stayed indoors enough, but she never looked pale.
Her grandmother was Colombian and her grandfather Colombian and Mexican, and yes, the distinction is important.
So many people just label it all Hispanic or Latina, but it’s so much more multilayered and multicultural than that.
Her mother had been the first person in the family to go to college and refused to speak Spanish at home.
She was American, damn it. Reggie learned Spanish in college and used it daily as a teacher on the West Coast.
“My eyes are up here, Zaniel,” she said, her voice thick with disdain, as if to say, So like a man to stare at breasts .
I hadn’t been staring at them, not really, but I didn’t try to explain that I’d been looking at her breasts and then started thinking about other things but just never changed my eye-line. She wouldn’t believe me anyway.
“You look nice today. Why am I in trouble for noticing?”
She covered her face with her hands and said, “What color of eye shadow am I wearing?”
Her nails were a red that matched the sweater and the lipstick.
“You wore the extra eyeliner to make your eyes look bigger, and added mascara, which you almost never do, because your eyes are so fabulous you don’t need it.
You told me once it was overkill for you.
Eye shadow is something pink and purplish, with an edge of sparkly red, but it’s all blended together so maybe there’s a brown in there somewhere. ”
She lowered her hands and stared at me, with her pink and purple eye shadow; yes, there was some brown in the crease of her eyes, and that sparkle of red like glitter almost. She’d worn makeup either for me or for her own courage, or she had a date later.
The thought made my stomach clench tight, which sort of hurt with the demon scratches healing and all.
“I thought you’d stopped looking at me,” she said.
“You told me I was staring at you and it made you uncomfortable, so I stopped doing it.”
She stared at me as if she didn’t know what to say, which was a first in this quiet room with Dr. Martin watching us.
She’d expected me to be wrong, to be just another stupid man who stares at women’s breasts and doesn’t look at their faces.
But I’d never been that guy, because the first woman I had ever loved had taught me to notice her, and I’d never stopped noticing women not just sexually, but in all the ways She’d wanted to be noticed.
How She made her hair that day, her eyes, her smile; she wanted to be worshipped and I had worshipped her.
Women after Her had taught me that they didn’t want to be worshipped, or they weren’t worthy of it until Reggie.
I thought she was The One. It wouldn’t be until after our son was born that I realized I was the romantic in our relationship, and Reggie was the practical one.
Romance is hard after a baby; practical is easy, practical is necessary, romance not so much.
I loved Connery more than I’d ever loved anyone except Reggie and the first woman in my life, but I missed the kind of couple we’d been before he was born.
I was beginning to be afraid that we couldn’t be a couple and parents at the same time, and it scared me.
“You always noticed the physical stuff, I guess I forgot how much you pay attention. But did you hear what I said, were you listening to me?”
Her body was softer than when we’d met, which meant her hips filled out the skintight jeans really well, and with less muscle on her calves she could fit into a lot more tall boots.
She was wearing one of my favorite pairs today.
Had she done that on purpose, or had she not even remembered how much I loved to go down on her while she wrapped the boots around my shoulders?
If she wore them because she remembered, I liked it; if she’d forgotten I didn’t want to know.
“Say something, Zaniel.”
I watched the irritation fill her eyes and knew the anger wasn’t far behind. “No, I didn’t hear what you just said, Reggie.”
I had tried to look at her as little as possible during the sessions for a while.
If she was never going to be mine again, then I wanted to erase the memory of her body from my mind.
I didn’t want to remember the strength of her the first few years, or the softer grace of her when she had to quit her job as a fitness instructor to teach high school full-time, because she’d finished her degree.
She’d taught women’s strength and fitness as her job to help pay for college.
Our second date had been working out at her gym.
I’d been able to keep up with her, and she’d been able to keep up with me, and some things she was better at, and some things I’d been better at, and that had pleased us both.